


From What I've Tasted of Desire

by CherryBlossomTide



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: AU, F/F, Fairies, M/M, Remix
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-18
Updated: 2015-11-18
Packaged: 2018-05-02 07:02:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,609
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5238899
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CherryBlossomTide/pseuds/CherryBlossomTide
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Queen of the Fairies finds London full of unexpected opportunities, not least the chance to amuse herself at the expense of two star-crossed young lovers who believe themselves to be under an enchantment. Remix of 'Sherlock and the Queen of Winter' by pocketbookangel.</p>
            </blockquote>





	From What I've Tasted of Desire

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Sherlock and the Queen of Winter](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1120313) by [pocketbookangel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pocketbookangel/pseuds/pocketbookangel). 



The air in London tasted different from when she had last crossed this boundary– rich, complicated, containing variously the spice of cooking food, the dank odour of refuse, the chill sweetness of new-fallen snow and the salty tang of smoke. She paused at the Gate and stuck her tongue out to catch a drifting fragment of charcoal, too small for human eyes. She heard Lestrade call out after her, but he was too late – she was already running, disappearing into the snow-and-smoke, seeking heat.

But the city is like more like a river than a conflagration, streams of people pouring from one place to another, tributaries of commuters spilling into the vast unending sea at London Bridge. That’s the best thing, Irene finds. London is stuffed with people, grasping, squabbling, hoping, _wanting_ creatures. After centuries of growing steadily more bored Irene is like a greedy child who has been let behind the counter at the pastry shop. At first she picks humans up at random, rummages like a pickpocket in the corners of their mind, then releases them, watching with delight as they stumble away, dazed but joyful. 

The humans here are different from those that had been brought to fairyland. The stolen soon grew slow and stupid and content like the fairyland natives. That was why Irene had come not to mind so much when men of law like her friend Lestrade came to shepherd away the lost. It wasn’t as if they were interesting after they’d been there for a while.

Here in London, everything was different – the city was like a knife edge, pressing at your back, everyone pushing forward, desperate and fearful and wanting _something_. And Irene liked to find that something, what people dreamed of, what they desired, what they _liked_. Pulling it out of them, watching them turn soft-eyed, awed and pliant to her touch. 

In fairyland she had had her imagination, vast, limited and unrestricted – aye, but there’s the rub, isn’t it? _Unrestricted_. Her power had limits in London. She couldn’t point her finger and speak the words of command and have the very earth beneath her feet obey her. She had to resort to subtler means, persuasion, suggestion, soft touches and biting commands to make a person unlock for her, come close and start leaning into her touch, eating from her hand.

When Irene had first arrived in the land of the fae there was very little to it – a dreary pale drifting place, with a handful of old gorse bushes and a few muddle-headed old fairies scratching out a life underneath them. They thought they’d abducted Irene, which was nonsense - Irene could have escaped them any time she liked even if they’d tied her hands behind her back (and they hadn’t even had the wit to do that). But she’d been intrigued by these strange, wide eyed, almost-human creatures, unlike any that she’d encountered before that she’d allowed herself to be tempted away from the crackle of the hearth fire and into the white-skied wilderness.

 

“I’ve got a little human friend, a pretty wee present for my Peaseblossom,” her captor said as he bounced along at her side, in the complacent tones of an idiot. 

“She won’t like you anymore than she already does unless you freshen your breath,” Irene snapped at him.

The little man blinked at her with bulbous lashless eyes. “My breath? How do that?”

“Try chewing a mint leaf,” Irene said, and then blinked at the small flash of light before a green leaf appeared poking out from between the fairy’s lips.

“What did you do?” she asked.

“You done it,” said the fairy, meditively chewing.

“Me?”

“Fairyland,” the fairy says. “If you’ve got will and ‘magination you can make anything you want.”

Irene took in a breath and looked around at the blank staring horizon. “Anything?”

It had taken centuries before Irene had grown tired of testing her abilities. Somewhere beyond the Gate the people she had known and loved grew up, grew old and died while Irene carved out canyons, stacked clouds in cumulus formation, made it rain, snow, made the rivers rise up and the seas swell. She layered her world with tricks and puzzles and riddles, to challenge the clever and punish the stupid. She built herself a castle, a court, built a society from the pitiful scattering of magic and half-magic creatures that inhabited this place, and from the humans they poached. 

The boredom crept in slowly, like a sea mist rising from the imagined ocean Irene had made for herself, leaving her restless, unsatisfied. Sometimes she would send out one of her subjects to fetch her a playmate, someone she could watch and set her traps for and amuse herself with their, occasionally novel, reactions. 

That was how she had met Lestrade’s predecessor – Merlin had solved every riddle Irene set him, had seen through every trick, then turned and fashioned one for Irene herself. It was rather thrilling, if a little irritating, after years of entirely unquestioned dominance, to be presented with someone who had the wit to be genuine challenger. But fortunately, Merlin had more interest in the human world than her own.

“You can’t simply steal all our young people,” he had said reasonably. ”You have our Once and Future King right now cleaning out your stables. How can I explain that? He’s needed in our world.”

“If he was clever enough to be a King he’d find the way home,” Irene yawned.

“I don’t need clever, I need someone royal blooded, physically able and impressionable enough to rule the way I tell him to.”

Irene shrugged, “Take him then. I can always get a new stable boy.”

“And if it happens again? No, I can’t have you meddling in our history like this. I propose a new agreement,” Merlin said. 

That was how Irene had agreed to the patrols, a force of men and women who would come in after abducted humans and lead them back – provided that they would play a few of Irene’s games along the way, of course. It actually proved rather a welcome relief: Irene enjoyed the visitors, who were invariably more interesting than the usual dolts her subjects brought home, and she liked watching the little dramas of them discovering and rescuing their countrymen. 

Lestrade was the most recent leader of the rescue patrol – and Irene had to admit he surprised her, a little. Finders were usually either immensely cunning individuals, chosen for their sharp wits and puzzle solving skills or pragmatic types chosen for their stony indifference to all things fae.

Lestrade was neither. He had walked into Irene’s Kingdom with eyes warm, appreciative and amused. He responded to her puzzles with a shrug and stepped over them. He was certainly not the cleverest visitor she’d had but Irene found she rather liked watching him anyway, for the novelty of the indulgent warmth with which he responded to the strange things she laid in his path, the clear and unafraid way he looked at her. 

It was a shame she was bound by her promise to Merlin not to keep humans without their permission. She could have shackled him, put him in a gilded cage and fed him strawberries through the bars, and seen if the look in those warm eyes changed at all. 

But she didn’t, and that was all for the best because then he would never had brought her Sherlock Holmes, the man with features so oddly pointed and eyes spaced so far apart that he could almost been fae himself if he hadn’t been far too clever. It was he who had had the frankly magnificent idea that Irene should travel out into the human world again.

Irene had been sceptical at first – the human world she remembered had been rather duller than her own. But now Irene had seen how society had progressed in her absence, how very full and complex the human world was now, she could see how right Sherlock Holmes was.

 

Irene set up home in Belgravia in a house which bore more than a passing resemblance to Irene’s fairyland castle, white marble and thick blue carpets and a small scurry of maids to keep the place clean and polished – no use messing with a model that works, after all.

Irene also kept a place by her side for her favourite human: Kate had soft white skin and hair of a shade of red Irene had never been able to recreate in fairyland – a few things are hard to magic into being and primary colours are among them (even the fire in Fairyland was pale and cold). But it wasn’t only her looks that fascinated Irene. Kate had spent her youth in a religious institution, a grim and colourless place where every desire was considered something to be controlled and every scrap of pleasure was scrubbed out or locked away. As a result Kate had developed a very vivid imagination. Irene was delighted to discover a seemingly endless fund of fantasies wrapped up in that glossy scarlet head of hers. 

They were just sitting in the drawing room, Kate’s head pillowed in Irene’s lap, flame-tinted strands of hair slipping through Irene’s fingers, and Kate was recounting one of Irene’s favourite fantasies, the one about the Greek princess tied to the rocks to be a human sacrifice and the naughty sea witch, when the doorbell rang.

One of Irene’s maids appeared, looking discomforted and announced ‘A man in a vicar’s collar…’

The door banged behind her, and Sherlock Holmes appeared, hair puffed out at one side and dog collar unravelling. Kate sat up, frowning.

“You-“ Sherlock pointed at Irene accusingly. “I’ve a bone to pick with you. You and your – _enchantments_.”

Kate turned to look at Irene, blinking enquiringly. Irene smiled an implacable smile and nodded at her.

“Tea please, Kate.” She gave Kate’s hair a final tug as she stood, just to let her know they hadn’t finished playing. Kate left with eyes brightening.

Irene stretched out her legs on the couch and watched Sherlock, his pretty hardly-human mouth pouting and fingers moving in short jittery movements.

“Now then. Enchantments?”

“The love charm,” Sherlock spat. “I can’t work under these conditions. I can’t maintain a disguise, I can’t interrogate a witness, I can’t _concentrate_. I need a cure!”

“And you think I’m the person to help.”

“It’s your world, your – magic,” Sherlock Holmes spoke the last word with some reluctance. “There must be a way of undoing it.”

“Hmm,” said Irene, watching the man with a growing sense of contentment. She did enjoy the detective, his fae face, his angular body, his prickly manner, and the confused warm wanting thing that beat beneath it. He would be rather a magnificent pet, she thought, tamed and kept at heel, like having a snow leopard on a leash. And what better cage is there, than to believe yourself under an enchantment that does not exist?

“Come and kneel beside me,” Irene said, and watched with secret delight as the man stiffened, eyes widening.

“Why on earth…”

Irene rolled her eyes languidly, “I need you here for the magic to work.”

“Couldn’t you do it standing?”

“Ah, but you’re the one asking for a favour and I’m very comfortable where I am. Now, do you want me to cure you or don’t you?”

Sherlock stared at her, eyes narrowed for a moment and then slowly walked over came to her side, getting to his knees. Irene smiled down at the curly head, held stiffly on that long white neck. She placed a hand on his forehead, tracing the faint lines on it with scarlet fingernails before closing her own eyes and focussing.

Sherlock’s mind was a delight to invade. He’d arranged it in the manner of a palace (though in Irene’s opinion, it had rather less of a sense of the aesthetic than her own castle) with many doors leading to rooms, all tightly packed with information, standing room only. 

But there was only one thing Irene was looking for: the door that wasn’t a door but a gate, black and rusted, grown with ivy, rarely used – beyond it Irene could hear the sound of water babbling, could catch a glimpse through the railings the sight of lush green grass lit by sun. Garden of earthly delights. Irene pushed the gate open, ignoring as the hinges complained, and stepped in.

There were no flower beds, Irene noted, but thick grass, daffodils growing in clumps and wild untended looking hedges, growing thick with roses. It was underneath one of these that Irene found Detective Inspector Lestrade, sitting at a desk and tapping away at his PC with great assiduity, completely ignoring the snaking tendril of the rose plant inching over one shoulder.

Irene turned to see Sherlock – or his own mind’s version of him, at least (a little taller, Irene noted, coat flaring in a way that seemed rather contrary to the rules of fashion or physics.)

“Lestrade,” The mind-Sherlock spoke in a throaty, desire-filled tone. 

Lestrade’s head snapped up, eyes widening, darkening. 

“Oh, Sherlock,” Lestrade’s voice was also rather deeper and more throat-y than Irene could recall it being in real life.

Mind-Sherlock approached him, laid a hand on the back of his head, fingers threading through the thick grey hair before tracing down his jawline, tipping back his head for a long slow kiss. 

As fantasies went, Irene thought, watching the fumble of grunts and gasps and clothes coming off, it was all terribly orthodox and rather disappointing from a man as clever and unusual as Sherlock Holmes. Still, it would be interesting to see Sherlock’s face now she had discovered it. She clapped her hands and found herself on her sofa again.

Sherlock was glaring at her, sweat beading his forehead, hair, if possible, standing up more than ever. Irene stuck out her tongue to taste the drop of sweat hovering on the tip of his nose and he jerked backwards.

“What was that?”

“Just taking a look,” Irene grinned.

“You haven’t cured me! If anything you’ve made me worse.”

“I never said I’d cure you.”

“You said-“

“I said _you_ wanted me to cure you.”

There was a moment of silence as Sherlock stared at her. Then he got up, and started to pace. “Of course, another trick.”

“I find them rather fun, don’t you?” Irene idly traced one of the sofa tassels over her fingers.

He rounded on her. “No, I don’t. What is the cure?”

Irene leaned back and smiled. “There isn’t one.”

The pacing stopped short. “There isn’t-“ Sherlock’s voice sounded strangled.

“The only thing to do is to let it run its course,” Irene flicked her gaze over the man. How telling that he’d chosen to disguise himself as a vicar, humans really were all the same – always a self-portrait. “You haven’t, have you?”

“Haven’t… ah, you mean...” Sherlock’ lips tightened.

“Yes,” Irene’s smile widened. “I’m talking about sex.”

“I don’t.” Sherlock said shortly.

“No?” Irene paused - this was something new in her experience of humans. “Really. Not ever?”

Sherlock’s eyes narrowed slightly in response. “Anyway,” he said, in choked tones. “He won’t. He doesn’t want to.”

Again, this was something of an unusual development. Irene had glimpsed inside Lestrade’s mind a few times and frequently seen the image of the dark haired and lanky detective in all sorts of interesting poses (however poor he was at solving riddles, Greg Lestrade’s sexual imagination certainly had nothing of the prosaic about it.)

“Well then,” Irene said. “I’m afraid I can’t help you.”

Sherlock frowned for a moment. “If I could put him under an enchantment too, maybe….”

“It wouldn’t work,” Irene said. “The first love charm would render the second impotent.”

“What kind of a stupid rule…”

“ _My_ kind of stupid rule,” Irene said. “It isn’t nearly as much fun to watch people be mutually infatuated.”

Sherlock’s jaw started to work a little, as if grinding his teeth.

“There are human tactics you could use,” Irene pointed out. “Seduction. It’s really a lot of fun, even if it is harder work without magic.”

“That-“ Sherlock bit out and then paused – all of a sudden his shoulders seemed to slump and he collapsed into a chair, head bent. “I don’t know how.”

Irene jumped to her feet, feeling a surge of pure happiness. If only her favourite orchestra were here with their strings and bells, she would do a jig.

“I can teach you,” she said. “I’m really something of an expert. Stop slouching – and we’ll begin.”

 

Sherlock’ seduction lessons really were a lot of fun. Irene brought Kate in to participate - having spent her early twenties working her way through the ranks of human men before deciding (non-human) women were more to her taste, Kate had a lot of native knowledge.

Privately after Sherlock left they would burst into gales of laughter at the pure awkwardness with which Sherlock had executed some of their moves – the ‘drop something and then bend over’ had been performed with all the agile grace of a marionette whose strings had been suddenly dropped by a careless puppeteer, and his ability to compliment left much to be desired.

“Your eyes are more moist in appearance than the average person’s – I find this appealing,” was one of Irene’s especial favourites, along with “Your preferred brand of larger is utterly disgusting, and broadcasts all the deficiencies in your education, and yet somehow I would still like to taste it once it has entered your mouth.”

And then, seemingly simply to make Irene’s life all the sweeter, Lestrade appeared on the scene. He looked even more rumpled than usual in a suit that Irene had previously learned in one of her jaunts into Lestrade’s mind, claimed to be no-iron but had somehow still picked up creases, his eyes bloodshot and his jaw scraped where he had cut himself shaving.

“You have to help me,” he said, without preamble. “I’m willing to pay.”

“Help you with what?” Irene said with faux-innocence, and already enjoying herself immensely.

“It’s Sherlock, he’s still under that – whatever it was your fairies gave him.”

“The love spell?”

“Yeah. God knows how, I thought those things were supposed to stop working once we were through the Gate.”

Irene shrugged. “Love and magic work in mysterious ways. I can’t see why this is your problem. Or mine.”

“He keeps coming on to me!” Lestrade blurted out. “All the time! It’s driving me mental.”

“I should have thought you’d enjoy it,” Irene said, with a meaningful glance and enjoyed the sight of Lestrade’s cheeks growing pinker.

“It’s no fun to have someone throw themselves at you when you can’t say yes.”

“Can’t you?”

“Of course not.”

“Why?”

Lestrade’s jaw clenched, in a way admirably similar to the way Sherlock’s had. Irene idly imagined casting them both in bronze and then placing them on either side of her mantelpiece, a matched set.

“In this world,” he said tightly. “It’s not considered the done thing to take advantage of someone whose judgment is impaired.”

“Who said it was impaired?”

“This isn’t Sherlock. Last night he complimented the shape of my fingernails, for god’s sake.”

Irene glanced at Lestrade’s utterly unremarkable fingernails. “I’m afraid there’s nothing I can do.”

“Nothing?”

“There’s no antidote, I’m afraid. You’ll have to wait it out.”

Lestrade’s face is the picture of despair. “Is there really no way you can help me at all?”

“Well,” Irene said slowly. “I suppose you could always try human methods of cooling an admirer’s ardour. My personal assistant has a few tips.”

“That,” said Lestrade fervently. “Would be a great help.”

“I’d need payment, of course.”

“Course you would,” Lestrade said, a little grimly.

“Nothing major – access to your mind. Only to look, I won’t take anything.”

Lestrade opened his mouth and then closed it again, clearly not happy about the idea of her in his head. “If you like, I’ll confine myself to the garden.”

“The garden?”

Irene flashed her teeth at him, a gesture somewhere between a snarl and a smile. “Your desires. Your fantasies.”

Lestrade sighed heavily. “All right,” he said. “Knock yourself out. But I warn you it’s no place for a lady.”

“Oh Lestrade,” Irene said. “You should know I’ve never been one of those.”

 

From then on Sherlock came to Belgravia every Wednesday evening at four to learn how to seduce Lestrade and Lestrade came every Thursday at 6, to learn how to resist Sherlock. The irony was every bit as delightful as the payment (particularly Sherlock’s, who had the most boring sexual imagination Irene had ever encountered) but still there was plenty for Irene to store in the back of her mind to take out and discuss with Kate later.

 

This arrangement continued for a good month before Irene found herself accosted by a third visitor.

“Hey,” John Watson said grimly, stepping out of the shadows one rainy day on the porch of Belgravia as Irene closed her umbrella and fished out her keys.

“Hello,” Irene said shortly. She didn’t like John, never had felt quite comfortable around him – the solidity of him, the flinty quality that lurked in those deceptively soft-seeming eyes.

“I wanted to have a word,” John said. “It’s about Sherlock.”

“Sherlock who?”

“Don’t play the innocent,” John said. “The man who suggested you come here in the first place, the place where you’re having such fun, playing your games.”

Irene stepped quickly inside her door and found to her annoyance that he had pushed in after her. 

“Fine,” she snapped and walked away dropping her dripping umbrella on the floor as she went (Kate would clear it up later).

John followed her to the drawing room where he stood upright, a solid military posture as Irene kicked off her shoes, peeled off her damp stockings and folded herself onto the couch.

“You have to tell them,” John announced, to the room.

Irene’s eyebrows raised. “Tell who what?” 

“Tell Sherlock, and tell Greg – Sherlock isn’t under any enchantment. He just has a crush.”

Irene’s eyes widened. “What makes you think that?”

John rolled his eyes. “Come off it, I’m not blind. They’ve always had a soft spot for each other.”

“Have they?”

“Yeah, as you know full well. So stop filling their heads full of nonsense and let them get on with it.”

“Even if they are labouring under a little misconception, it has nothing to do with me.”  
John’s lip curled. “This stuff is fun for you, isn’t it? Playing with other people’s feelings, watching them scrabble around.”

“They aren’t _your_ feelings,” Irene said. “I can’t see why you mind so much.”

“Because he’s my best friend!” John barked out, and if Irene had any notion at all of fear, she would have jumped. “And because Greg’s a good bloke and they deserve to stop pissing about and be happy. Jesus, you don’t get it at all, do you? I feel sorry for that girlfriend of yours; you’re going to eat her heart out the same way you do everyone else’s.”

 

Irene noted the reference to Kate with a vague feeling of disquiet. The image of her pretty laughing face flashed before her juxtaposed suddenly with another image, of clouded dead eyes and a red and dripping exposed human heart.

“I’ll pay you,” John said “You can look inside my head if you want. That’s what you do, isn’t it? You can look inside and take anything you want, go on. I don’t mind.” And he stepped forward to take Irene’s manicured hand in his rough one, pressing it against his forehead.

Instantly Irene felt cold, her stomach cramping. The harsh grey-blue eyes bore into hers. _Iron-born_ , she thought – she should have known it. One with not only an inbuilt resistance to magic but the ability to throw it back into a practitioner’s face, to bend a magical will to his own. Irene saw suddenly, not a garden, but a room, flocked wallpaper and stacks of paper, a man standing alone by a window clutching a violin. A song started playing, a plaintive, heart wrenching melody that made the tears start in her eyes unbidden.

“Don’t,” she said.

The scene shifted and Irene could see an office, a little like the one in Sherlock’s fantasy - the grey haired man at it is slumped, head in his hands, shoulders drooping with misery.

Irene jerked backwards and broke the connection with John’s mind.

“Well?” John asked.

Irene stared at him. “Get out,” she said, and pulled deep out of her centre the words of command. She was strong enough to resist any iron-born. “Get out of my house.”

 

After John left, the house seemed very quiet. The clock ticked hatefully and Irene’s stockings, slung over the back of the sofa dripped onto the floor. Somewhere, in another part of the house, Kate started to sing and it stabbed at some part of Irene, some part she’d forgotten long ago. 

“Stop it,” she tried to call out, but her voice was strangely weak.

Images crowded in on her, the things she had seen in John’s mind, the sad and suffering men, and then other, less recent, memories – the girl in scruffy clothes on the street corner whose mind Irene had entered only to find her deepest desire was to see her dead dog again, to touch its warm coat and feel its breath against her face – it had been the only thing in her life to have ever truly loved her. Irene had dismissed the discovery as boring, but now it pricked at her like a poisoned needle. 

And suddenly she was remembering her own childhood, the life she’d left – the low crackle of the fire, the woman who had sung to her in a high clear voice, so like Kate’s. Her mother must have died a long time ago, Irene recalled. And Irene had never said goodbye to her.

Irene’s hands trembled as she picked up her phone, then typed out a message.

_What have you done to me?_

The reply is so swift that Irene knows John Watson had had it typed out already.

_Tell Sherlock and Greg the truth, and I’ll undo it._

 

Irene had ordered the room to be filled with flowers and plants, large ferns unfurling in the corners and tips of potted palm trees brushing the ceiling, a profusion of wildflowers in vases and bowls on every available room and surface. The heating had been turned up a notch and Kate had lit a fire in the ornamental grate. Between the warmth and the scent of the compost and flowers the room smelled like summer.

John frowned suspiciously as he entered. “This seems a bit more dramatic than necessary.”

“Not at all,” Irene said. “If you want them to really believe me, we’ll need a little bit of atmosphere – and perhaps just a touch more magic.”

“More magic? I don’t think…”

“John, I didn’t know you’d be here,” Sherlock came through the door, and looked suspiciously at the hedge-roses spilling out from a bowl on the table. 

“John is a witness,” Irene said serenely.

“A witness to-?”

“What’s all this then?” Lestrade looked around admiringly at the plants as he entered. He turned to Irene. “Very nice – reminds me of the glasshouses at Kew. Weird thing to have in your sitting room though.”

Lestrade’s eyes travelled around the room and fell on Sherlock and the smile died on his lips. “Ah. Hi.”

Sherlock’s voice was almost as hoarse as his dream-self’s. “Hello, Lestrade.”

Behind them Irene could see John rolling his eyes.

“We are here,” Irene said in ringing tones. “Because I have found the counter-spell.”

Sherlock turned sharply to look at her. “You have?” Irene noted with amusement the barely concealed disappointment in his voice.

“Thank god,” said Lestrade. “What do we need to do?”

“The spell is one that allows two people to see their own hearts clearly,” Irene said. “It breaks through any other enchantment or – misunderstanding.” Her eyes met John’s briefly. His brow furrowed but then slowly he nodded. “I need you both to stand in front of the fire and hold hands.”

Irene took Sherlock by the coat sleeve and guided him, still stiff and seemingly reluctant, to the fireside. Lestrade followed. Irene joined their hands and then stepped backward.

Lestrade looked down at Sherlock’s long slim fingers wrapped around his with a resigned expression. Sherlock’s face was even paler than usual.

“Close your eyes,” Irene instructed. 

“Must we really-“ Sherlock began.

“You will do _exactly_ as I say,” Irene employed her most commanding tone and Sherlock’s eyes fell shut. 

“I want you to go into that garden that exists inside yourself – I’ve been there with you before. Find it, and look around you, take note of everything you see. These are your deepest desires.”

Lestrade’s lips parted slightly at this, his eyes moving behind the lids. Irene could see Sherlock’s face furrowing, clearly struggling with the desire to rebel against her orders, but in the end his face relaxed too.

“I’m going to sprinkle some spring water over you, to clarify your thoughts. It was gathered in May by the light of the Full Moon."

In fact the water had been gathered fifteen minutes previously from Irene's tap but there was no harm in showmanship. Irene took out a little bottle with a stopper from her purse and gently flicked some into first Lestrade’s face, then Sherlock’s. 

“Everything you see now is the true wish of your heart,” Irene said. 

Sherlock’s mouth fell open a little. Over by the corner, John Watson shifted on his feet.

“Now open your eyes,” Irene said. Lestrade’s eyes opened immediately, Sherlock’s a little more reluctantly, eyelashes fluttering and pupils dilated. “I want you to hold each other’s gaze for a full minute.”

Irene took out her phone and started a timer. “By the end of that minute you will feel with complete confidence that you know what you both truly feel for one another.”

Irene wasn’t sure her instructions had been necessary – both men were staring at each other as if the answer to the all Universe’s secrets could be found imprinted at the back of the other’s retinas. Irene noted Sherlock was clutching Lestrade’s hands ever more tightly. John quietly straightened and came over to stand by Irene’s side, looking over her shoulder at the seconds ticking down. Eventually it beeped quietly, but neither man looked away from the other. 

Then Sherlock let out a breath and took a tentative step forward and Lestrade’s hands settled around his neck. Sherlock lowered his head, forehead brushing against Lestrade’s.

John cleared his throat, laid a hand on her elbow. “Maybe we should give them some privacy,” he muttered.

Irene felt oddly caught for a moment, watching as the two men inched closer to each other. There was something in their faces that made Irene feel as if she had discovered something, some missing piece of a puzzle.

“Irene?”

“Yes,” Irene said, and turned, walking with John to the door. She glanced back to see Sherlock and Lestrade locked in what looked like a very enthusiastic kiss. 

“Well,” said John once they’d shut the door behind them. “That went well.”

“Of course it did,” Irene said loftily.

John’s smiled at her, a warm and genuine expression and for once Irene found she didn’t want to recoil from him at all. “It was kind of you.”

“You forced me into it.”

John shrugged. “You didn’t have to do it so thoroughly. That was very – romantic. Was it a real spell?”

Irene shrugged. “Human psychology.”

John’s eyes crinkled a little. “They say magic is only science we don’t understand yet.”

“They haven’t met me.” Irene said in superior tones. 

John grinned, and then leaned forward pressing his palm against her forehead. Instantly Irene felt lighter, the dragging sorrow that had filled her since his last visit vanished as if it had never been there.

“Oh,” she said.

“You won’t feel it anymore,” John said, and then hesitated. “But remember it if you can. People here get hurt easily, maybe more easily in your world.”

“I don’t understand why.”

“I suppose if nothing is real, then nothing can really hurt, can it?” John said.

Irene frowned and said nothing but whatever John had seen in her face must have satisfied him because he nodded once abruptly and turned to leave.

 

 

Sherlock and Lestrade left too, eventually, flushed and rather rumpled, Sherlock’s hand still clutching at Lestrade’s shirt sleeve. Irene watched them from the landing and then stood for a while listening to the echo of the door that had slammed behind them travelling through the empty house. Someone purely human wouldn’t have had hearing keen enough to hear the sound waves slowly fading into nothing but Irene was not human. ( _She had been once, though_ ).

 

Irene found Kate in their bedroom, stitching a new seam in one of Irene’s dresses. Irene took the needle and the clothes from her hands and let them tumble onto the floor, pushing Kate back to lie on the bed, spreading out her long red hair on the pillow.

Kate smiled. “New game?” she asked.

Irene looked down at her a moment and then shortly shook her head, turning her face to nuzzle in the corner of Kate’s neck, breathing in the scent of her hair.

“Irene, what is it?” Kate’s tone was a little softer.

Irene sighed softly and placed a finger against the pulse point in Kate’s neck. “You’re very warm, Kate.” 

Kate didn’t reply, but her arms tightened around Irene.


End file.
